


Spontaneous combustion

by KoshiSekisen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Crowley is a Little Shit, Crowley messes up, Demon Deal Headcanon, Depressed Castiel, Gen, Hurt Castiel, Protective Dean Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Season/Series 11, Sick Castiel, Spontaneous Combustion, Stolen Grace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-11-18 17:38:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11295504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KoshiSekisen/pseuds/KoshiSekisen
Summary: “So you’re saying,” Sam repeated, his eyebrows arched high in disbelief, a notepad in one hand and a pen in the other. “Janine just…”“She… poofed,” Sheriff Emily Burke insisted, pinching the bridge of her nose with her fingers.





	1. She who just... poofed

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first SPN fanfiction! Please be kind!  
> And special thanks to Aini_NuFire and 29PiecesOfMe who both have awesome and inspiring fanfics :)
> 
> Not Beta'ed, so all mistakes are mine and mine alone.
> 
> Also, this story happens around Season 11, except there are no mentions of the Darkness or God.

The bunker was hardly ever quiet. Its ancient electric system buzzed the nights away, the pipes screeched when water rushed through them (despite the shower’s amazing water pressure), and the old doors moaned and groaned when used. Since Sam’s heavy footsteps thundered whenever he walked, Dean could keep track of his brother. Even Castiel, who strode with purpose, would create a dull echo with his feet. Dean liked to think he was stealthy in comparison, but Sam and Cas always looked up expectantly when he entered a room.

“Mornin’,” Dean grumped, putting down his mug of hot coffee.

Sam hummed in acknowledgment, eyes glued to the computer screen, one hand on the keyboard and the other around a glass of a disgusting-looking green smoothie.

Dean rolled his eyes, he knew what Sam’s expression meant. So much for having a weekend off.

“Case?”

“Yeah,” Sam replied, taking a sip from his health drink from hell. He turned the laptop and Dean scanned the contents of a sensationalist, low-budget online newspaper. “I remembered Cas mentioning the area a while ago, some angels went AWOL there a couple times… but when he dug around, the case went cold. And now there's this woman, a Miss Janine Richter, who ‘ _spontaneously combusted_.’”

Dean raised his eyebrows, glad he hadn't been swallowing.

“Whoa, _what_?” he sputtered. “What’s that mean?”

Sam glared at him. “It means she turned into a fireball.”

“Think this is connected to Cas's case?” Dean suggested, fishing for his phone in his jeans pocket. No voicemails or new messages.

“Maybe, but last I heard angels didn't burn humans like this.” Sam shrugged, but at Dean’s look of incredulity, he added, “I mean, sure. They smite and give stomach cancers, but this?”

“Asked Cas yet?”

“No. I'm still reading on the case. Check this out, though, it gets weirder,” he clicked back a few times. “So this Janine Richter was diagnosed with breast cancer about three years ago. Advanced and — I quote — ‘very incurable’, and ‘she was at death’s door’,” he frowned while changing the tabs on the screen. “And according to this interview, she was healed ‘magically.’”

“Crap,” Dean grunted. “That means a crossroads deal…”

“Except no hellhound mauled her to death, Dean.” Sam had on his _catch up_ voice, which was unfair considering Dean hadn’t even gotten three hours of sleep last night. “An angel?”

“You’re thinking they healed her and _then_ burst her into flames?”

“I don’t know what to think.” Sam shrugged. “But a woman ‘bursting into flames’ after a miraculous healing and angel disappearances sounds like a solid case to me.”

***

The small city of Edenwood might as well be called _Apple Pie Princes and Princesses Valley_ , in Dean’s honest opinion. Large houses, wide driveways, picket fences, even children rode stereotypical blue or pink bicycles. It housed a huge mall, two Catholic schools, three diners and not a single decent bar. Sam liked the place — people were friendly and cooperative under their guise as FBI agents, and the motel also smelled good. Dean would’ve enjoyed their stay had it not reminded it him of the town he’d lived in with Lisa and Ben.

It had taken them shy of six hours to drive from the bunker. Since dark hadn't set in yet, they donned their fed threads (they needed new ones, Sam’s were frayed around the ankles and Dean’s had a hole under the armpit) and headed to the police station. The sheriff, a freckled blond woman in her fifties, had welcomed them into the case.

“So you’re saying,” Sam repeated, his eyebrows arched high in disbelief, a notepad in one hand and a pen in the other. “Janine just…”

“She… _poofed_ ,” Sheriff Emily Burke insisted, pinching the bridge of her nose with her fingers. When she opened her eyes, they were red-rimmed. “I cannot believe it. We’re a small community, agent Wesson, a close family. Everybody loved her.”

“But did she…” Dean interrupted himself, unsure how to continue. “How did she… You know…”

“Well, she and her husband, Doctor Richter,” she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, “were having a dinner party with the Changs. She made them Lemon Angel Pie—her best pie—and then… _poof_.”

Dean had trouble wrapping his head around the word _‘poof_.’ It must have been obvious because Sheriff Burke sighed.

“She… Well, her husband said she didn’t scream at first like she didn’t even notice she was burning…” She took a tissue from a drawer under her desk and blew her nose. “Excuse me… She was… in flames and by the time th-they—by the time they… I’m sorry, gentlemen, it’s too recent, and she was a c-close friend of mine. She c-cared for my mother when she was in hospice....”

Dean exchanged a look with Sam.

“We’re so sorry for your loss, Sheriff,” Sam said.

“We’ll take over, ma’am,” Dean added.

“But… why? It was a freak accident, Agent, why’s the FBI…?”

“Strange circumstances," Dean answered. “There might be foul play.”

“Oh, no, I don’t believe that,” she responded, her voice cracked. “Agent, I know you don’t know us… But this is a small town, a good town, with good people. No one would ever hurt…”

Sam glared at Dean before he said something. “We understand. It’s just—orders from the top. We’ll be out of your hair as soon as we see the body and talk to the witnesses. Standard procedure, I promise.”

They both stood from the uncomfortable metallic chairs, she followed suit. “Sure. But be kind to Doctor Richter. He’s mourning. He almost lost Janine three years ago to cancer and this… Oh, he’s heartbroken.”

By the time their interview with the sheriff was over, dusk had set in and it was too late to go to the morgue or visit Doctor Richter. Sam insisted on visiting the area, but they learned friggin’ nada from the residential street. The porches were lit, the gardens well kept, and nothing reeked of supernatural involvement, which made Dean the more suspicious.

“My money’s on angels,” Dean said when he parked the Impala.

Castiel arrived later that night, just after Dean finished clearing out their Chinese takeout and while Sam took a shower.

Clad in his trademark navy suit and tan trench coat, Cas strode inside, his expression serious, yet his tense shoulders and balled fists betrayed how alarmed he was. Dean had wondered what Cas would think about the whole ordeal. Sure, he trusted the guy, but he lost his cool when it involved his dick-family.

Not that Dean had a better track record himself.

“Hello, Dean.”

It hit the hunter that Cas’s signature greeting had lost some of his luster. Back when he had first met him (what with the seals and the apocalypse and man that sounded like it happened centuries ago), Cas had always been busy, in a hurry. Now, he seemed tired.

“Heya, Cas. ‘Bout time, man. How’d you get here?”

“By bus,” he answered. The bathroom door opened and Sam came out, a towel around his shoulders. “Hello, Sam.”

“Hi, Cas,” Sam greeted with a grin. “The bus, huh?”

He couldn't imagine Cas, an angel of the Lord riding in the back of some bus, staring out the window, waiting patiently to get to his destination. Dean hated buses with almost as much passion as planes, they kept stopping at random places and were always late. How did Cas take to them, anyway? Especially considering he’d been able to zap in and out in the blink of an eye. He never mentioned what the loss of flight meant to him, though Dean was sure he wouldn't like the answer.

“I like the bus,” Cas said, surprising Dean. “Interesting people use buses.”

As much as he wanted to discuss Cas’s definition of interesting people, Dean let the subject slide and sat down on the bed. Sam remained standing, toweling his overgrown hair dry.

“So, the case,” Dean insisted. “Sam mentioned you’d been here for a case before. Missing angels?”

“Yes.” Cas shifted and lowered his eyes, a telltale sign that he didn’t like where the conversation was going. “Two years ago, there were signs of a battle. I found the wing marks, but I had to leave before I could investigate any further.”

“You had to leave?” Sam repeated, sitting on his own bed.

“My brothers and sisters discovered where I was, so I had to flee.”

The meaning behind the words escaped no one. Dean clenched his fists. For all Cas’s devotion to his bag-of-dicks-family, they sure went all out trying to kill him. He exchanged a look with Sam.

“Thing is, at about that time, this woman, a Janine Richter, was diagnosed with cancer,” Dean went on. Cas stared at him, listening. “Then she was healed magically… Angels can heal humans, right?”

“Yes,” Cas nodded. Dean bit back the question of why there was cancer in the first place.

“It turns out,” Sam continued, “this same woman died two days ago to ‘spontaneous combustion.’ Can angels do that?”

Cas frowned, cocking his head to the side.

“When humans see our true form, their eyes burn,” he replied.

“Right, but she wasn’t alone when it happened,” Dean insisted. “And not just her eyes, her whole body went up in flames, like… _poof_.” Sam bitch-faced him.

“No, then I don’t think it’s an angel,” Cas said, shaking his head.

“Maybe...!” Dean blurted, standing up, “She was possessed by a demon and some other hunter burned her bones and she just happened to be having dinner?”

There was a silence, and for a moment Dean was sure he had gotten it right when Sam shook his head.

“Why would a demon have a dinner party?”

***

The visit to the morgue and the interview with the mortician who had performed the autopsy took less than an hour. The doctor, a grumpy-looking, balding and sweaty sixty-year-old, refused to be cooperative.

“Dunno why the friggin’ feds need to see her,” he mumbled, loud enough for all three of them to hear.

“We have to establish the cause of death…” Sam tried.

“ _Cause of death_ ? It’s in the autopsy report! She _burned_ to death!” he barked. “Don’t you think our town’s shaken up enough without you guys showing up?”

Dean rolled his eyes, trying not to think about how suspicious and cliched those words were. “I understand, but orders from above…” That excuse usually pacified anyone who worked in big organizations — policemen, doctors, lawyers — but doctor Morales just glared at him.

“Janine was Victor’s wife,” he growled. “We don’t want feds, we want to mourn her.”

"Of course," Sam said, softly.

With one last glare, the man opened the lever and pulled open the gurney where the body lay. Dean took a step backward as he unveiled the white sheet.

“Damn,” he whispered.

Working as a hunter, both Sam and Dean were used to gruesome sights. They saw cadavers on a weekly basis, from all kinds of deaths and their consequences. Drowned children, mutilated women, men infected with supernatural diseases… However, it was hard to believe the charcoal-like mass in front of them had once been a human being. There were protrusions and black brittle stumps that could only be the remains of fingers. The head, round and clear of any shape other than a small bump that might’ve been a nose or a chin, had  little cracks along the surface. It took a second to realize those must’ve been the eye sockets.

Sam looked green.

Cas, who had kept quiet as per the brother’s instructions the whole time, was the only one unfazed. He studied the remains of Janine Richter with interest, taking a step closer. Morales had moved away as soon as he uncovered the woman, so he didn’t notice Cas sniffing her. Dean cursed. He needed to tell him to cut that out.

However, when Cas looked up, Dean knew Cas had figured out something.

“Okay, you’re right,” Dean said with a shrug. “Nothing else can explain her… state. We’ll get out of your hair.”

As soon as they left the grumpy doctor behind and were seated in the Impala, Dean turned around from the driver’s seat to watch Cas, who had a frown on his face.

“So?” he insisted when Cas kept quiet.

“There are angelic remains in her,” Cas said, at last, his voice low and thoughtful. “I could feel traces of grace.”

“So an angel did it?” Sam asked, frowning.

“I don’t think so,” Cas replied. He wouldn’t meet their eyes. “It felt rather like the remnants of a possession. I believe that woman was a vessel.”

“Dammit,” Dean sighed, after a long silence. “Cas, can anything turn an angel into a fireball?”

Sam glared at him for his lack of tact. Cas furrowed his brow. He shook his head but said nothing.

***

“Agent Wesson and Smith,” Dean announced, raising his fake FBI plates. “And this is Agent Milton.”

The man standing in front of them, doctor Mark Richter, looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. He was a good-looking fellow in his mid-forties, tall, with tanned skin and dark curly hair, but he had the dazed look of a sudden widow. He held on to the door frame, at the verge of toppling over, which also prevented the three from entering his house.

“Hi, agents,” he said, his voice hoarse. “It’s not a good time.” His eyes widened at the sound of his own words. Damn, but Dean pitied the guy.

“Doctor Richter, we know,” Sam sighed. “We’re here to talk to you about your wife, Janine.”

“My ex-wife,” the doctor supplied. He shook his head and spoke, this time to himself. “My therapist said speech of part of assimilating the news.”

“Um, yeah…” Dean replied, wincing at his lack of tact. “We’re sorry for your loss.”

Doctor Richter raised his head and looked at Castiel, who stared back at him silently. It took the angel a moment to realize he was supposed to say something.

“Our condolences,” he said, at least.

“Please, come in.” Richter moved away and showed them to the living room.

It was a big house, the white walls, dark furniture, and wooden flooring created a sense of elegance and abundance. Everything was spaced out, the TV on mute, and there were food containers, still full, over every surface of the room.

“Help yourself to anything. I’m not hungry.”

Sam glared at Dean, and Dean scowled back. As if he’d steal the food of a grieving man.

“Doctor Richter…” Sam began. “We’ve talked to Sheriff Burke about the case, and Doctor Morales…”

“They all believe it was SHC, Spontaneous Human Combustion,” he shook his head.

“You don’t believe it,” Cas noted.

“No,” he said. “I’m a man of science, agents.”

They waited for him to continue, but Richter just slumped back against the sofa and motioned with his hand for the rest to sit with him. They did.

“My wife got sick three years ago—breast cancer. You’d think I’d be the first one to notice, right? I’m an oncologist,” he laughed, his fists clenching. “She was fading quickly, so I prayed and the angel saved her.”

Dean tensed but schooled his expression into neutrality. Sam raised his eyebrows, but Cas leaned forward, squinting.

“Long story short, gentlemen,” he said, his voice jumping from mourning to glee. His eyes were focused on Castiel, his mouth set in a thin smile. “I ran out of grace.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Preview:
> 
> “What the actual _fuck_ ?!” Dean shouted. “ _Fuck_ ! Did he just _fly_ away?!”  
>  “Dean—”  
> “—Son of a bitch!”  
> “Dean!” Sam shouted over his brother, who kicked the sofa. “A little help here?”


	2. More questions than answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What the actual fuck?!” Dean shouted. “Fuck! Did he just fly away?!”  
> “Dean—”  
> “—Son of a bitch!”  
> “Dean!” Sam shouted over his brother, who kicked the sofa. “A little help here?”

Sam scrambled to his feet, hands to his belt. He pulled out the gun, but by the time his finger reached the trigger several things happened.

His breath was knocked out of him, and it took him a few seconds to realize he'd crashed against a heavy bookshelf. A few books rained over his head and shoulders. In the midst of a whoosh of white noise, he heard his brother call out his name, but another commotion broke out on the other side of the living room.

When the confusion and the blackness around the edges of his vision cleared, he scanned the room until he met Dean’s eyes (sprawled on the floor, grimacing) and realized with a jolt neither of them could move. His gun lay a few feet away, out of reach. Sam pulled against invisible restraints but stopped at Cas’s gruff voice. He craned his neck to see, but the upturned dining table partially blocked his view and he could only see Richter’s back.

“How are you doing this?” Cas’s voice sounded strained. “You're just a human…”

Doctor Richter scoffed, fingers twitching. He sounded winded, and Sam could make out a drop of sweat rolling down his reddened face. Whatever he was doing to Dean and himself — whatever he was doing to Cas — came at a cost.

“I misspoke. I shuh... should've said ‘I'm _almost_ out of... of grace,’” he panted. “But now that _you're_ here I... I guess I don't have to worry about saving it... anymore.”

And with a hoarse snarl, he raised his other hand and swapped the air in front of him.

Sam heard Cas’s grunt and then a loud crash. He lost sight of him, which meant he was on the ground. “Cas!” Sam tried to turn his head a bit further, but he couldn't. His shoulders burned with the strain.

“Let him go, you son of a bitch!” Dean sounded as furious as Sam felt. From his position under the window, his brother watched everything and the panic in his voice was telling. “What the _fuck_ are you doing?”

Whatever powers Richter wielded, however, came at a price. Richter stopped, swaying, his fingers gripping a side table as though about to topple over. His face, flushed seconds ago, turned an alarming shade of pasty white. He doubled over, panting.

“I'm guh-going to take that if you d-don't mind.” He stuttered so badly, it was hard to understand him. “I've got lives to... to save… If only you’d cuh-come sooner...”

Sam growled at the invisible pressure keeping him in place. Alarmed, he saw Richter struggling forward once again, his posture unstable, but with a visible determination in his steps. He reached Cas, and disappeared completely from view as he crouched next to the angel.

“ _You let him go you_ sonofa _—_ ”

A scream interrupted Dean’s threats. Sam froze, his insides turned to ice, upon realizing it was Cas’s voice. He never sounded like that — and Sam had been unfortunate to hear him in pain more times than he cared for. Sam cursed as he heard a scuffle — Cas fought back, but Dean’s shouts painted a clear picture; Richter overpowered Cas.

_How the hell…!_

Air rushed to his lungs as whatever force that kept Dean and himself down cracked and vanished. Reeling, Sam shared a look with his brother, their muscles taut, and nodded. Dean clenched his jaw, looked toward Richter and Cas’s direction, and raised his chin to indicate Sam. They were so used to working together — over a decade of back-to-back hunts — he understood what Dean wasn’t saying.

Sam took a breath.

With a swing to the side, he leaped to his feet and slammed his fist against the bookcase. Richter, on his elbows and knees, towered over Cas who was sprawled on his back. The loud thud interrupted Richter and he turned, pulling his arms away and drawing another cry of pain from the angel. Richter’s eyes were red and bulging, his lips splitting his face in a grin Sam associated with rigor mortis.

The smile of mania.

In his hand, however, he held a single object in between his fingers, long and sharp. Sam’s mind almost shut down upon recognition.

“ _No!_ ” Sam shouted as Richter used it to stab himself on the thigh.

A flash of light as bright and quick as lightning swallowed up the room and sounds.

Sam found himself leaning on his knees, trying to blink away the black spots in his eyes. He knew that light, he’d seen it before.

At his left, Dean dashed and launched himself at Richter, sending them both to the ground with a crash as the coffee table turned over and broke. The sound of a fist hitting flesh and a grunt of pain resonated in the room — but Sam focused on getting to Cas.

He lied on the ground, his expression slack — Sam had only seen him like that after Dean’s Mark almost… He pushed the thoughts away. He dropped to his knees and, with as much gentleness as possible in the direness of the situation, turned him on his back. His eyes picked up on a puncture wound just below his left ear, a steady stream of dark red and a wisp of blue light flowing lazily.

The blood was bad, but the _light…_

 _Shitshitshit._ “Dean!” he called. Cas’s eyes were closed, his head lolling with the motions of Sam examining the wound. He pressed it to stop the flow of both blood and grace. Cas gasped in pain, his eyelids flickering.

“Fuck!”

Sam whipped around in time to see Dean fall to the ground with a gasp of pain. His nose bled, staining his chin and the front of his shirt. The momentum of the fall, however, threw him back within reach of Sam’s gun. Dean smirked, throwing his arm behind him to point at Richter’s chest with a steady hand.

Richter grinned. Not only was the previously sickly pallor of his face replaced by a youthful and energetic expression, his whole defeated posture now brimmed with strength. He stared at the barrel of the gun with a patronizing look, with the confidence of all the monsters Sam had faced before with the wrong weaponry.

“Thank you,” he purred. He wasn’t even out of breath. And, suddenly, he vanished.

A sound they hadn't heard in years, the fluttering of wings, accompanied him.

“What the actual _fuck_ ?!” Dean shouted. “ _Fuck_ ! Did he just _fly_ away?!”

“Dean—”

“—Son of a bitch!”

“ _Dean_!” Sam shouted over his brother, who kicked the sofa. “A little help here?”

Dean cursed, but hurried to their side. Sam held Cas upright, and fortunately, he seemed to be waking up. He struggled to get his breath, and there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead despite being cold to the touch.

“Cas, hey, man,” Sam called while Dean patted him over for injuries. He noticed the wound on his neck and the dribble of grace, and paused with a troubled expression on his face.

“Sam…?”

The brothers exchanged a look of relief, but it was short lived. Cas gasped in pain and his hand reached arthritically toward the wound. His fingers were soon coated in blood.

“Cas, that—did you see what he attacked you with?” Sam asked, helping the angel sit upright.

“Yes.”

Dean frowned at them.

“Dean,” Sam began. He stopped and looked at Cas, who nodded with a grimace. “That was the Men of Letters’ needle to extract grace.”

***

By the time Sam finished recounting what the needle was and its uses to his brother, they arrived at the motel room.

Cas, who had walked to the car unassisted at first, ended up needing both brothers’ help to get to the room and collapsed onto the bed without a word. Sam currently held a warm cloth on the wound while Dean showered. Whatever that needle had done to Cas, its effects seemed worsened by the minute. His skin, which had been cold to the touch back in the house, bordered hypothermic and he shivered despite the comforter over him.

Doctor Richter had known about angels and grace, enough to overpower Cas and steal it with the needle. Worst of all; he somehow acquired angelical powers.

“... ngh…” Sam frowned at Cas’s obvious discomfort. Although not asleep, he wasn't really lucid. Whatever was happening still hurt him.

Dean came out of the shower, dressed in his FBI threads, and sat on the other bed, facing them with a grimace.

“Any changes?”

“He's out. Where are you going?”

“I'm talking to Sheriff Goldilocks and doctor Morgue,” Dean spat, gritting his teeth. “There's something they ain't telling us.”

“You think they knew Richter’s an angel?”

“Not an angel,” Cas groaned, his voice a growl. Sam sighed in relief. “He’s a human.”

“Cas, the man tossed us around the room and fluttered away—I say that counts as being an honorary angel.”

Sam bit back a snort.

“So Richter using angel mojo… _your_ mojo, doesn't make him an angel?”

Cas had said so in the car, but it was easier to think of Richter as an angel they knew how to kill than a whole new species of monster. According to Cas, and true to Sam’s suspicions, doctor Richter had used the needle to inject himself with Castiel’s grace, an unprecedented move that by all accounts should've made him explode.

“He has my powers—until he runs out. He is human so he won't be able to regenerate it on his own…” Cas gasped, and shivered. Dean took a step closer and covered him with a blanket from the other bed.

They were out of working theories, and Cas could barely string words together, not to mention formulate hypotheses. Sam sighed.

“When you removed Gadreel’s grace from me…” he began. Cas stiffened, and Dean leaned in forward, expression pinched in worry. “You said it wouldn't kill me, that it would snuff itself out.”

“I was healing you…”

He stopped talking, clenching his jaw to stop from crying out.

Sam remembered the needle. Cas had been very careful, gently pulling on the plunger and stopping midway to save his life. Doctor Richter, however, practically ripped it from him… it was a miracle Cas survived.

“How are you doing?” He asked when Cas didn't continue to talk. He shared an alarmed look with his brother when he realized the angel had passed out. “Dean…”

“Okay, that's it.” Dean kicked the bed he sat on. “I'm gonna kill the bastard. You stay here.” He stood up and left the room. That he didn't slam the door was a testament to his concern.

***

With an unconscious angel for company, Sam took the time to put together a few theories regarding the case.

That Richter might have flipped and exploded his wife was a possibility Dean had brought up, but Sam couldn't shake the genuine sense of grief upon meeting the man. They both knew the difference between real and fake mourning, and if they didn't, Cas would've noticed.

Sam now suspected the doctor had been using the stolen grace (which correlated to the angels’ disappearance years ago) to save his patients — to save his wife, and upon running out, she had died. _What about his other patients?_

But _why_ did he have the needle? It was identical to the one in the bunker, which had traumatized him enough to never forget the damned thing. Had there been two, to begin with? Somehow, he doubted that.

Doctor Morales had spoken reverently about Richter, which coincided with his theory that he used the grace to heal patients. There hadn’t been anger or thirst for revenge against angels in general in his demeanor, though, just guilt under the surface. _If only you’d come sooner_ … that implied Cas’s grace would’ve kept Janine alive.

He’d been _running out._ That’s why he hadn’t been able to save her.

“Dammit,” he cursed.

Using angel mojo to save people… A long time ago, his brother and himself might’ve been impressed by his motives, but they couldn’t commend anyone when their friend got hurt.

How on earth had he come up with the knowledge to do that? Not even Cas had known self-injecting grace wouldn’t kill a man.

A groan shifted his attention.

Was Cas _human_ now? Would being grace-less it _kill_ him?

When Metatron had locked the gates of heaven, Cas became human. He hated remembering that period of their lives; the incomplete trials, Dean tricking him into accepting Gadreel, Dean kicking Cas out of the bunker… Locking those memories away was easier than dealing.

Cas hissed, and Sam stood up and walked to the side of the bed. The warm, damp towel had fallen from his neck, revealing a gaping purple hole and a dark bruise around the area, small vein-like tendrils ghosting around like a spiderweb. Sam touched the area and his stomach dropped with worry at the heat of his skin. Cas had been freezing less than an hour ago.

“Cas?” Sam called, a gentle hand on his shoulder.

He groaned again, louder, and his eyelids trembled.

_Maybe I should let him sleep._

Angels weren't supposed to sleep, but it was disturbing how often he'd seen Castiel do un-angel-like things for the past years.

He took the towel and rinsed it in the bathroom with cold water. After draining the excess, he placed it carefully on Cas’s forehead.

***

Cas twitched, groaned in pain, and his temperature kept fluctuating from borderline hypothermic to burning up at an alarming rate. Sam knew his body was trying to adjust — trying to find a healthy 98.6F, and the coughing indicated his lungs were clearing themselves to work.

Sam would've taken him to the hospital if not for Richter, and he wasn't even sure Cas would make it outside the room.

He sighed. Dean had left almost three hours ago.  

He shot him another message.

Sam tossed the phone on the bedside table and adjusted the computer on his lap. He surfed the web in search of any information regarding angels and grace-theft, though he knew that any answers he wanted — if there were answers, to begin with— would be in the Bunker’s library.

His phone rang. Sam stood, placing the laptop one-handedly on the desk, and swiped the screen before it woke Castiel.

“Dean—” he hissed.

“Sam,” Dean interrupted. He recognized his brother’s tone of voice, his _shut up, I have something important to tell you._ “Listen. It’s happened again, half an hour ago. Another patient went kamikaze.”

Sam stood, his chair screeching the wooden floors and Castiel stirred with a slight cough.

“Where are you?” He hated the thought of leaving Cas alone, but he couldn’t let Dean face Richter on his own.

“Scene, house of the patient — a Fred Donovan,” Dean answered. “I looked for the son-of-a-bitch, but he’s MIA.”

“Think he’s using Cas’s grace?” Sam swallowed, but his throat felt dry.

“Won’t let him. Can’t have Cas working at Gas ‘n Sip again,” the attempt at a joke fell flat. “How’s he doin’?”

“Unchanged.” Worse, actually, but Dean didn’t need to worry about that yet. “Dean, if that’s his second patient, he’ll try to reach out to others—”

“—to _‘save’_ ‘em?”

Doctor’s Richter’s words resonated in Sam’s mind. _“I've got lives to save… If only you’d come sooner...”_ He nodded. “At least we know whom he’ll be after—I’m going to find a list of his patients. You come back here.”

Dean’s lack of protest was a statement in itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Preview:
> 
> “Whoever took that needle might’ve stolen other artifacts,” Castiel pointed out. After a few coughs, he added. “Finding out will tell us the magnitude of the problem.” Sam shot him a thankful look.  
> “Dammit Cas, we don’t have time to go to the bunker and check,” Dean spat. “Doing inventory’s gonna have to wait ‘till we’ve killed that bastard.”


	3. The same or not the same... that is the question.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Whoever took that needle might have stolen other artifacts,” Castiel pointed out. After a few coughs, he added. “Finding out will tell us the magnitude of the problem.” Sam shot him a grateful look.   
> “Dammit Cas, we don’t have time to go and check,” Dean spat. “Doing inventory’s gonna have to wait ‘till we’ve killed that bastard.”

His Father had bestowed many gifts onto humans ⸺ hope, passion,  free will ⸺  yet as a being whose existence spanned from the beginning of time, for uncountable millennia,  Castiel now understood that Death remained perhaps his Father’s most gracious gift. 

Knowledge of the workings of the  universe , the endless possibilities of every ramification belonged to  Castiel , its infinity weighing steadily on accustomed shoulders. For all he had known when meeting Dean in the Pit and Sam later on, the two Winchesters were mere variables in a plan destined to fail from the start. 

The Apocalypse sounded like such a trivial occurrence compared to all they endured. 

First , keeping the Seals from breaking. Second, ensuring the battle between the archangels wearing the skin of Sam and Dean. Third, defying Heaven and Hell and all he’d believed in to protect the Winchesters, to save  the world . After that, they faced  one crisis after the other, made  one mistake after another, met  enemy upon  enemy with villains as varied as they came. Maybe his  brothers had been right. Perhaps the Apocalypse was the planet’s destiny now turned to a slower, sneakier end despite Team  Free Will’s attempts to thwart plans from God, and Death, and the  Universe . 

His existence had meaning only since meeting the Winchesters; the eternity prefacing them a blank of nothingness. 

His stint as a man prevailed as the most beautiful and painful event of all. He had experienced it  _ all _ . The unforgiving stab of hunger, the relentless embrace of the cold, the uncertainty of  whether he would survive to see another day. He never told Sam or Dean even after regaining his  grace , but pain had taught him invaluable lessons. From scrapes and scratches which overwhelmed during the first few  seconds , to the otherworldly agony before April the Reaper killed him. 

He’d died. 

In several occasions, twice as an angel, once as a mortal. Only the latter had been unpleasant.

***

Would dying hurt this time as well?

***

“... with us? Cas. Cas, hey, man, you with us?”

Castiel opened his eyes ⸺ he didn’t recall having closed them ⸺ and saw the blurry outline of Dean Winchester looming over him. Then, something happened and a loud noise shook the room and Dean cursed. Castiel realized he was locked in a spasm and air pounded inside his chest, burning its way out of his mouth in short bursts. His vessel ⸺ no, not anymore, his _body_ ⸺  purged itself in the form of coughs. 

Dean kept talking, while heavy footsteps echoed, which meant Sam hovered nearby. 

As  a divine creature , he understood time: its passing fluid, but comprehensible. As a human, however, seconds stretched into eternity, hours  blurred  away ... How long had he remained there; in pain, his vessel so tight it seemed to reject the  angel inside? Except he wasn’t  one , not really. His wings broke and his feathers then  melted . Even with his threadbare grace, he was a poor example of a celestial being.

No wonder his brothers  felt contempt. 

No wonder both Dean and Sam pushed him away. 

Something shook him and he opened  his eyes . Again. Why did he keep closing them? And then  colors bloomed and he focused onto both hunters watching him with expressions they only used when regarding each other. 

“ ... Hey, no falling asleep again.”

They were family. Team  Free Will. He thought, because he wasn’t able to remember the words or when and where and who had spoken them. The memories scurried away where he  could n’t follow. He tried chasing them anyway.

“D’n…” he rasped. His mouth was dry, and he  recognized the sensation with a mixture of panic and nostalgia. Thirst. There had been plenty of it as a homeless human. “S’m…”

“⸺ tting worse, Dean. We need to bring him to the  hospital .”

Castiel remembered a  hospital .  He’d been in several over the course of the brothers’ adventures.  He vaguely recalled staying at one when  he’d been cut off from the Heavenly Host. He remembered the yells from the men who’d found him. 

Time .

Time evaporated.

“... cking Richt⸺”

“⸺ he’s delirious, Dean!”  Sam’s voice sounded uncharacteristically hard, reminding  Castiel of when he’d been soulless.  Castiel left his soul behind in the Cage, with Lucifer; not on purpose, but he’d been  useless like that . 

“No, Cas,” and now Sam reverted to his usual soft, kind tone. A cool, ghost-like touch caressed his forehead. Sam talked to Dean that way when his brother was in pain. He should use that voice more often because Dean always hurt. Sam always hurt. “You’re not useless. You’re family.”

And his body burned  like a furnace and flames and screams and shouts bellowed as he flew into Hell in search of the Righteous Man. 

The First Seal had broken and  Dean Winchester had to be saved. 

***

The next time Cas awoke, he was wet. He didn’t recall being in the rain. Or in contact with water at all… and the thought brought along a thirst so vile his vision blackened for a moment. A second later, everything from Sam’s phone call to the syringe and his plunge  back to humanity, crawled its way into his memory. 

He tried to talk, but his lungs throbbed, sticky with liquid, and his coughs took like punches to his midriff. Hands, warm fingers touched his lips and something small slipped into his mouth which turned into water and he moaned. 

“Don’t speak, not yet.”  Dean . “Fever’s down.” 

Good news, Castiel supposed, because despite the weight in his chest and the exhaustion in his mind,  Dean only sounded like that when Sam was safe and sound. 

Was he insane again? 

Dean held a plastic cup. He fished something from it ⸺ an ice cube, he  realized ⸺ and put it in  Castiel’s mouth. 

“Sam’s been trying to find out what’s  happened to you. We think you’re human.”

Castiel nodded, and the room spun with the motion. A shrimping boat. He remembered it now. 

“You’ve been sick the whole night.”

If  Castiel’s senses hadn’t been so dulled, he might have been able to comprehend his situation… But logic kept slipping away,  far ,  far from reach. Once upon a time, he  could ’ve reached the end of the  universe on a whim.  He’d had wings. Not as big as the archangels, not as pretty as Anna’s, but they’d been his. 

“Get some sleep, man.”

***

The third time ⸺ probably ⸺ he woke up,  Sam sat next to him. Thirst didn’t cloud his mind anymore, but his muscles still ached. Thankfully, though, his head was clearer. 

“Hello,  Sam .” His voice grated painfully, and the vibration triggered painful coughs all across his chest, but he  could at least speak.

Sam , who had been staring at the computer with a look of intense concentration, startled and grinned at Castiel. He sported bruise-like bags from lack of sleep, and his posture indicated he’d barely moved from his side. 

“Cas, hey, good to have you back.”

“I never left.”

Sam opened his mouth, but closed it, still smiling. “How are you  feeling ? You scared the crap out of us, man.”

“Tired, shaky.” He saw no reason to deceive Sam, not when he knew more about Castiel’s human condition than he did himself. Had Dean asked, the Winchester lie would’ve slipped easily. “How long?”

“Six hours, give or take. Your temperature’s down and your lungs cleared up a bit ... but you’re probably  exhausted after yesterday.”

Cas didn’t point out he had slept the  night away , not when  exhausted was indeed how he  felt . 

“Where’s Dean?” 

Sam’s smile froze and his eyes drifted to the right. He was worried, Castiel recognized the patterns. Sam sighed and sat up straight ⸺ his shoulders cracked ⸺ his phone in his hand after placing the laptop on the floor. 

“ He’s been looking for Richter…”  Castiel opened his mouth to speak, but a deep painful cough interrupted his questions: why was  Dean alone, why wasn’t  Sam covering him, but  Sam kept talking, a  hand on Castiel’s  back to help him sit up . “We can’t find him, so  he’s visiting his  patients . That way they’ll  know how to contact us.”

As  Sam predicted, it took a few hours for  Dean to reach out to everybody and call to inform them of his progress.  According to  Dean , most  patients were shocked that Richter was under investigation, but cooperative when shown a fake FBI badge. No one had heard from him since nurses had been in charge of rescheduling their  canceled visits, and quoted that he was ‘nicest, most giving  doctor , ever.’ 

By the time Dean arrived at the hotel, Castiel’s temperature remained steady in a low-grade fever and, though tired, he was able to walk short distances and talk despite the relentless coughing. 

“Awesome,”  Dean said. He seemed to have gotten as much sleep as Sam. “We need to start moving and get your mojo  back before he spends it.”

“ Dean .” Castiel didn’t want to say the words, but they needed to understand the truth. Thoughts came easier, smoother, so was his understanding of the causes and consequences of Richter’s actions. “If he doesn’t use it,  those people will die.”

Sam sighed audibly as  Dean cursed. Obviously, both hunters had already arrived at that conclusion. 

“There has to be another  way ,  Cas .”  Sam shook his head. “ We’ll figure something out.”

“Plus, he’s gonna run out of juice eventually, so his patients are doomed, anyway.” Castiel nodded reluctantly. “Forget it,  Cas ,  we’ll figure out a  way to save them, but we ain’t buying them minutes at the cost of your life. Period.”

The question ‘why?’ almost slipped past his lips, but he said nothing. Neither would appreciate it, despite his genuine curiosity. _Saving_ _people_ _, hunting things_ , the motto Dean had repeated often during the early days, and he didn’t fit the ‘people’ category. He might be human now, but he wasn’t a person. 

“We’ll need that  needle to take the grace from him and return it,” Sam added. His long legs stretched in front of him like he did after spending hours on a chair or the Impala. He folded them on the knees and started bouncing  his left . “We should  check if it’s the same in  the bunker . If not, we can use that  one .”

“It can’t be, man.  _ I  _ didn’t even  know it existed,” Dean shot. 

“How are you going  to find out ?” Castiel asked. 

Driving home to Lawrence would cost them precious hours. It peeved Castiel that he wasn’t able to tell if the syringes were the same, or not. How nice would it have been if he could fly again, or if they’d had more allies ⸺ hunters who knew their hiding place like Charlie, good people like Kevin, Bobby. 

They had lost  everyone .  Everyone except him, a useless angel that  could n’t fly.

Perhaps the Winchesters were, indeed, cursed. 

***

Despite what he said, Castiel knew Sam believed it was the syringe from the bunker. He picked his words carefully, but his eyes shone with recognition and fear whenever he mentioned it. Castiel didn’t doubt him, he respected Sam Winchester’s intelligence. 

“Sure, Richter can’t have come to  the bunker without  us knowing,” he said, fingers entwined, elbows on his knees. “Nobody  knows the place⸺only  us . However…  someone who  knows about it c ould ’ve given it to him.”

“You mean  someone strolled inside and  _ gave  _ it to him?”  Dean snorted. “Forget it, Sam, it must be another needle.”

Castiel regarded  Dean’s dismissal.  Dean made sense. Humans didn’t  know of the Men of Letters Headquarters;  despite being able to physically go there , its  existence was off the radar. Monsters, however, might suspect the Winchester brothers hid somewhere while not hunting, but they still wouldn’t be able to get in.  Castiel warded every corner;  even against angels, and only carved an exception for himself at  Dean’s insistence. 

Had  Castiel messed up the warding? Surely not, or most creatures in the  continent  would’ve made themselves known by attempting to kill the Winchesters at night. 

“Dean,” Sam sighed. He untangled his fingers and looked at his hands. He always did that then when in anguish. “It’s the same needle. I’m positive.”

Dean grunted. “Let’s say you’re right, Sammy, we can’t drive back and check, now can we? Whether it’s the same or not, we’re gonna have to work around it.” 

“Whoever took that  needle might’ve stolen other  artifacts ,” Castiel pointed out. After a few coughs, he added. “ Finding out will tell us the magnitude of the problem.” Sam shot him a grateful look. 

“Dammit  Cas , we don’t have time to go and check,” Dean spat. “ Doing inventory’s gonna have to wait ‘till we’ve killed that bastard.”

Sam’s face tightened, fists curled tightly by his sides.  Cas understood  Sam’s misgivings, but  Dean’s tone was final and irrefutable.  Dean’s logic was solid and reasonable; returning  to the bunker would answer questions but wouldn’t solve their problems ⸺ and the clock kept ticking. But  Sam craved answers. 

“Crowley,”  Sam said, sitting up.  Dean sighed, dragging his hand down his face. 

“ _ No _ .  I’m not asking that backstabbing son of a bitch any  favors , especially not if they involve  the bunker while we’re not even  _ there _ !” 

“ Dean ⸺”

“⸺ _ no _ ,  Sam ⸺”

“⸺if  I’m right and Richter somehow stole it from us, who do you think  _ gave _ it to him?!”

Dean opened his mouth to answer, but Castiel was faster. “Crowley can’t go in, it’s warded.”

“We’ve taken them down on and off, Cas,”  Sam insisted. 

“Why the fuck would he _want_ that thing?!”  Sam shot his brother the look Dean called ‘the bitchface.’ Dean cursed. “So you want _Crowley_ to check? Why the fuck would he do that?! Aw, _hell_.”

Castiel noticed that Dean wasn’t looking at either of them anymore. He glared behind Castiel’s shoulder, his expression morphed into contempt and disgust. Alarmed, Castiel turned to face the King of Hell, hands in his pockets and a smug grin on his lips. When Crowley stared at him ⸺ and Castiel only saw his vessel’s appearance, not the dark demon beneath it ⸺ he grinned gleefully. 

Castiel remembered how upset Dean had always been with him when he flew in uninvited as the startle triggered a painful coughing  fit . Sam rubbed his between his shoulders, a solid pillar of comfort, but the pain in his chest didn’t ease despite the fit’s brevity. 

“Ah,”  Crowley said, his breath carrying a pang of  sulfur . “ Well, well, well . Sick puppy, eh.” He stared at  Castiel , who glared at him despite the heat of humiliation in his cheeks. 

“The fuck are you doing here?”  Dean snarled, standing before Sam and  Castiel . He wasn’t carrying any weapons.

“ Heard my  name , thought I’d  say hi,”  Crowley drawled. “It’s a little something called manners, Squirrel.”

“ _ Heard _ _ your  _ _ name _ , my ass,”  Dean insisted. “Sam’s right. You  know about that needle. Spill.”

“ Say the magic word,” Crowley’s grin widened with mirth. 

Castiel stood from the chair he’d been sitting on, his knees shaking but not buckling under his weight, and stood next to Dean. His chest wheezed, but he managed not to trigger another fit. “You wouldn’t be here unless you needed something.”

Crowley raised his chin,  his eyes devoid of all their good- humor and inhumanly cold. As an angel, the King of Hell didn’t intimidate him, but as a human ⸺ or whatever he was now ⸺ the dark power emanating from him made his skin prickle. Next to him,  Dean scoffed, unintimidated, and Castiel glanced at him in awe. He’d never appreciated the courage it took mortals to face supernatural creatures, but both  Sam and  Dean stood unfazed. 

“You’re going to kill Victor Richter and I will drag his soul to  Hell ⸺ personally. It’s a  win - win situation for you boys.” The smile didn’t reach his  eyes . 

“And why the _hell_ would we⸺,” Dean asked, his jaw set. 

“⸺deal.”  Sam interrupted. The second both  Dean and Castiel turned to stare at  Sam in alarm, Crowley left leaving behind him the smell of rotten eggs. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Preview: 
> 
> “There is nothing the King of Hell can’t know or find out,” Crowley replied, still smiling, hands in his pockets.   
> “Yeah? You figure out a way not to be a dick,” Dean spat.   
> “Are you propositioning me, Squirrel?” Crowley shot back. “I have no qualms.”


	4. What's the Deal?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There is nothing the King of Hell can’t know or find out,” Crowley replied, still smiling, hands in his pockets.  
> “Yeah? You figure out a way not to be a dick,” Dean spat.  
> “Are you propositioning me, Squirrel?” Crowley shot back. “I have no qualms.”

“ _ Are you out of your  _ mind _?!” _

Of  _ all _ the things to say, out of  _ all _ possible outcomes of that incredibly stupid situation, Sam had gone and made another frigging deal with  _ Crowley _ . Sam scowled when, in a fit of anger, Dean's fist slammed against the table and startled Cas into a coughing fit. He watched as his brother rushed to the angel’s side, rubbing circles on his back like they always did when one of them fell ill. 

Fuck. He’d expected a simple case — mysterious death, gank the cause — but somehow they’d ended up with a human Cas and Sam making a deal with the King of Fucking Hell. 

“ _ Dean _ ,” Sam barked, pissed, and Dean had never told him how much he looked like their dad when he got all pissy; and how hard it was becoming to stand his ground when Sam radiated John Winchester’s fury. 

“Forget it, Sam. No dice.”

“He said our half was to kill Richter,” he insisted, irritated but gently pulling Cas toward one of the beds. “No souls, not even a contract.”

“You think that backstabbing son of a bitch’s not gonna find a friggin’ loophole?!”

“Dean's right,” Cas conceded. He sounded winded, blinking as though he had trouble focusing. “That was a… rash decision.”

“Jesus, Cas,” Sam insisted, running a hand through his hair, fingers curled in frustration. “You said it yourself; we need to figure out if it’s the same needle or not,” he paced around the room. “I don’t like working with him any more than—”

“—sure ain’t looking like it—”

“—you do, but if it is and Richter has anything else from the Bunker, we’re screwed, Dean.”

Dean sighed. He understood Sam. He  _ did _ . Finding out how the doctor came across that needle, how he figured out to  _ use _ it and his knowledge on angel juice... It was important to the case. But if they wasted any time playing detective, Richter might burn out whatever he’d stolen from Cas. 

Cas said little about his wings or his mojo, but now he either drove places or rode buses (buses, for fuck’s sake) instead of flying, and even when he’d still had it, healing wounds left him winded. He barely recognized the  _ Castiel _ — angel of the Lord, heavenly accountant— from back in that old barn, and the blame lay entirely on Dean I-break-everyone-I-meet Winchester’s shoulders. It was his fault. Dean wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger at Richter on sight if it got them Cas’s grace; he owed him that much. 

They weren’t even sure if this would end up killing Castiel — his fever had stabilized, but Cas was far from alright. 

He couldn’t lose him. 

Not again.

They didn’t have the  _ time _ to match the needles, they needed to fix this now.  _ Should’ve asked Crowley for Richter’s whereabouts while at it _ , he thought in spite of himself. 

“Say it is the same needle, and that he found the Philosopher’s Stone while we’re at it,” Dean spat. Sam glared at him. “So what? How’s that gonna help us?”

“The men of letters have weapons…” Cas said. He leaned against the headboard, the covers of the bed pulled over his lap. He sounded out of breath, which made worry itch at the back of Dean’s throat. “They could use them against you.”

It took all of his self-restraint not to kick a chair, but the disappearing whiff rot intensified. He turned. “ _ What? _ ”

“My, my, Squirrel, who’s got your panties in a twist?” Crowley drawled, licking his lips. Dean’s stomach clenched; he despised seeing the demon so pleased with himself.

“Well?” asked Sam, rolling his eyes. “ _ Spill. _ What do you know about the needle?”

“There is nothing the King of Hell can’t know or find out,” Crowley replied, still smiling, hands in his pockets. 

“Yeah? You figure out a way not to be a dick,” Dean spat. 

“Are you propositioning me, Squirrel?” Crowley shot back. “I have no qualms.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Cas added. Dean looked at him in surprise, Cas seemed bored with their bickering. After a few coughs, which left him almost breathless and a shade paler, he added. “Get to the point, Crowley.”

“Someone’s impatient not to die,” Crowley chuckled and Dean’s stomach fell at the implication that Cas would, indeed, die. “But I can’t wait to drag that soul to Hell with me, either, so let’s cut to the chase. Yes, Moose, it  _ is _ the same needle.”

Sam shot Dean an extremely irritating  _ I-told-you-so _ look. Dean rolled his eyes. Whatever. 

“How’d he get it?” Sam insisted. 

“Well, that’s an embarrassing story.” Dean held his breath. He wasn’t going to like this. “I gave it to him.”

***

Dean wasn’t proud of many things. In his life, he messed up more times than he fixed anything, and the reason he probably—probably—wouldn’t end up in Hell had to be his track record in  _ saving the world _ . He hoped that counted.

From letting innocents die to torturing souls in the Pit, Dean had no grandiose illusions of being a good man. His  _ worst _ sin in existence, though, had been his stint as a demon. It could all be traced back to Abaddon and his decision to take the Mark of Cain and give into it until he turned and ended up dark side. It hadn’t even let him  _ die _ — but that wasn’t saying much, considering he had a track record of  _ not _ staying dead. 

Crowley had made fun of him, calling him  _ Deanmon _ (ha, ha, hilarious) and teasing him under the pretense of being friends, but the truth remained that Dean had learned a lot during those months. Demons didn’t get tired, righteousness meant nothing, and they had an uncanny understanding of the inherent darkness of all human beings. He had read into Sam’s fear, his hatred for Dean’s stupid decisions. He’d even glimpsed Cas’s light, bright and pure despite everything the Winchesters had put him through. 

In short, Dean had been a demon. Heck, he’d been Crowley’s BFF. 

He should’ve known what a Demon deal was — how it worked. It would’ve saved them so much time. 

“Our kind of deals are omnipotent,” Crowley explained, his shoulders pulled back like he always did when explaining his mastermind evil plans. He turned to Dean. “That means absolute and unlimited, for the lesser-minded.”

Seeing red, Dean moved forward, fist almost in the air when Sam stopped him, rolling his eyes. It was hard not to get riled up. “Shut—”

“—which makes sense, considering we’re getting the most powerful ingredient in the universe in return,” Crowley continued, as though he hadn’t noticed Dean’s interruption. “We’ve got to deliver whatever they want, or else it’d be bad for business.”

“Get to the point,” Sam snapped. 

“ _ Point is _ , you  _ stupid  _ overgrown reindeer, that we can do  _ anything _ as long as their information is specific enough.”

Cas sat up, triggering another fit. Dean frowned, concerned, when he took a whole minute to recover. When he spoke, his gravelly voice was wrecked. “If Richter had known about angel grace and how it worked, you would have known about the needle and where to get it.”

“And  _ how _ to get it,” nodded Crowley. “You can ward that Bunker against Lucifer for all I care, but if there’s a deal involved, it’ll all be useless.”

“Bullshit,” Dean exclaimed, irritated. 

He swallowed past a lump of fear. Yeah, right. No fucking way, not when practically all of  _ creation _ had a vendetta against the Winchesters. The Bunker was warded against everything, covered in spells and traps, salt in every corner and the walls were filmed with iron, the doors’ handles coated in silver. If a simple Demon Deal could render the protections useless, they’d have to hit to road and forget about home. He felt like throwing up. 

“Don’t worry your pretty head,” Crowley spat. “Lucifer’s a halo and he wouldn’t stoop down to lowly marketing sales gigs. Only I have access to that kind of power, being King of Hell and all,” he tipped his chin forward, as though making a reverence to himself. “Which is why  _ I _ made that deal.”

“You took the needle,” Cas supplied, because Dean was paralyzed with the effort to not jump and stab him, and Sam remained eerily quiet beside him. “Why are you helping us?”

“Because he’s a backstabbing son of a bitch,” Dean spat. Crowley actually  _ winked _ . 

“That doctor of yours has been… problematic.” He shifted, a red glint on his eyes reminding Dean that a, he wasn’t a demon anymore so Crowley still had the upper hand in a fist fight and b, they needed this piece of filth alive for now. “He asked for a way to recognize angels and take their grace for himself and I, of course, accepted. On one hand, I’d secure his and his patients’ souls — good deal, if I say so myself — you know how it goes. And on the other hand, I’d mess with you, which is in my Top Five pastime. A win-win for me.” 

In short, Crowley would get human souls,  _ innocent souls _ , and Richter got his angel-radar superpower and the needle. 

“I swear I will kill you,” Dean stated. He surprised himself with the calmness of his voice. Even Crowley raised an eyebrow, but his lack of a cheery response indicated he perceived the seriousness of the threat. “I will make it painful.”

“So what happened?” Sam insisted, irritated. 

“ _ HE HASN’T  _ PAID  _ IS WHAT HAPPENED! _ ” Crowley roared, starting them. 

Cas’s breath hitched, and Dean glared at Crowley. Cursing, aware that if he did nothing, he would really try to murder Crowley with his bare hands, he dashed toward the kitchen and filled a glass with tap water. Without saying a word, he handed it to the angel, who accepted it with a nod of thanks. Sam himself had his eyes closed in an attempt not to lose his temper. 

“He used the grace to  _ heal _ his patients, which became such aberrations  _ they’re going straight to Purgatory! _ ”

Dean froze. 

“They—,” Sam said, clearing his throat. “People go to Purgatory if they’re healed by grace?”

How many times had Cas healed them? Dean had lost count—scratch that, he’d never counted.

“No,” Cas breathed, breezily. He stared at Crowley, squinting as though having trouble seeing. Dammit. “When we… When an angel uses grace to heal, they purify the soul… They should be going straight to Heaven.”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “You’re not quite the sharpest feather of the flock, are you? Richter’s a human with angel juice—”

“—so instead of purifying, it corrupts them,” Cas finished, ignoring Crowley’s jab. Dean wanted to think Cas was above smiting him out of spite, but in fact, he would probably crumble all over the place the moment he tried to stand up, not to mention he wasn’t juiced up anymore. 

“He’s sending human souls to Purgatory,” Dean repeated, frowning as memories of damp heat, adrenaline and unheard prayers hit him like a hammer. Richter was handing out one-way tickets to Purgatory. That meant Janine Richter and Fred Donovan’s souls were already there, in a land of monsters and Leviathan. 

“So your job is to catch him and let me take him, and you can have the needle and the grace — for what good it’ll do.”

“Fine,” Sam said, shooting Dean a warning look. “You get your pride back — we get the rest. Where is he?”

***

“I cannot believe we made another  _ deal _ ,” Dean hissed, stomping around the room again. 

His feet hurt — he’d been out the whole day speaking to Richter’s patients and too nervous to sit  — but he couldn’t calm down. Sam kept insisting it was the only way, and although Dean understood that, that they were going against the clock, it didn’t mean he had to  _ like _ it, dammit.  _ Fuck, fuck,  _ fuck _. _

Sam sighed, running his hands through his overgrown heap of hair. He looked as exhausted as Dean felt, and he hated seeing his little brother like that. Rubbing his eyes, Sam shook his head, unwilling to go back to that endless dog-chasing-its-tale part of the argument. 

Cas slept on the other bed. He’d refused to rest until exhaustion knocked him out, and Dean gnawed his lip in worry when the coughing continued even while unconscious. He was getting warm again — nothing like last night’s fever, but enough to concern Dean, to make him angrier and more irritable than usual. 

“Dean, we need to figure out how Richter came across the information on angels,” Sam said, shaking his head and biting back a yawn. “He obviously knew about them before making the deal with Crowley. We’re missing half the picture.”

“Well, not even  _ Cas _ seems to know that much about grace-transfusions,” Dean hissed. “Which is weird, considering he self-infused himself, once.”

Sam gave him a perfect rendition of bitchface two-point-zero. Dean didn’t have the right to talk about that period of their lives, it was an unspoken agreement. Not when he’d been hanging out with Crowley at deadbeat Karaoke bars. Sam had hated that time, probably even more than the months stuck in Hell with the Devil, or caught in Gabriel’s never ending let’s-kill-Dean spree, because they had both failed each other spectacularly. 

“Shit, Sammy.” Dean allowed himself to sit on a chair, sighing so hard he might as well be blowing out birthday cake candles. “This is so messed up.  _ We  _ are so messed up.”

Sam said nothing for a minute. “Let’s wait for Crowley to find out Richter’s whereabouts. We’ll think about the rest later.”

Without saying another word, Sam shifted until he lied on the bed, his back to his brother. Dean leaned over and turned off the light, sitting in the darkness and wondering, not for the first time, when had angels and demons become a part of their daily lives. 

***

A buzzing started Dean awake, and a stab of pain whipped his neck at the awkward position in which he had fallen asleep on the desk. He cursed, Sam groaned and shifted, and Cas was again stuck in a pathetic, almost voiceless coughing fit. 

His hand shot toward the phone vibrating on the table, which flashed a name that took a few moments to recognize. Brenda Blacks, the wife of one of Richter’s cancer patients. He swiped his finger across the screen.

“Agent Smith,” his voice sounded cranky, but that was to be expected at four am. 

“Agent Smith,” Brenda repeated, her southern accent hitching in distress. “Sorry about the hour, you mentioned I could call at all times—”

“—yes, yes, what is it?” he insisted, sitting up straight. 

Sam, already on his feet, turned on the light and threw their duffel bag on his bed. Cas sat up, head so low his chin almost touched his chest, but at least he wasn’t hacking out a lung. 

“—Victor, I mean doctor Richter, Mark’s doctor, my husband, he called about ten minutes ago—woke up Mark, and said to meet him at the riverbank, the one east of the main road, that he has this new drug, a pharmaceutical miracle, that’s what he told Mark, but you said he was dangerous and he just won’t  _ listen  _ to me—” 

Dean had the phone on speaker so that both Sam and Cas could hear while he donned his leather jacket and secured his angel sword. Bullets might not work with a grace-powered man, but the sword would do. Dean was more than willing to do the honors. 

Sam, dressed and ready, slung the bag over his shoulder and was helping Cas put on his tan coat. Dean’s stomach plummeted. Cas wasn’t in any condition to fight, not when he looked about to keel over at the slightest breeze. Sam seemed to read his thoughts, his mouth in a tight line. 

“We’ll be right there. You stay away, ma’am.” 

Dean hung up and pocketed the phone in his jacket. Back pockets were a bad idea when he would probably crash about in the air. He rushed toward Cas, hanging an arm around his shoulders and cursing at the blazing heat of his skin, and with the help of Sam, he deposited him in the backseat of the Impala. 

“You call Crowley — what the  _ fuck’s  _ he doing,” Dean instructed Sam, hitting the gas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Preview:
> 
> “What-what’s one angel compared to the rest of the world? I’m curing cancer!”  
> Even Richter realized that was the wrong thing to say when he saw what must’ve been murderous expressions on their faces.  
> “You don’t mess with our family,” Dean hissed.


	5. It's the final countdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What-what’s one angel compared to the rest of the world? I’m curing cancer!”  
> Even Richter realized that was the wrong thing to say when he saw what must’ve been murderous expressions on their faces.  
> “You don’t mess with our family,” Dean hissed.

Sam prided himself in being the level-headed Winchester so, while Dean broke every traffic rule and swore like a sailor, Sam kept his eyes on the map, except when he glanced back in the backseat. Dean’s turns were violent but swift; the Impala’s tires would’ve shrieked the neighborhood awake had Sam attempted to imitate him — they had to be silent. If the police caught them driving without their lights on and at breakneck speed, they would waste precious minutes trying to con their way out. 

And every second counted. 

If Richter disappeared on them again, they would need to wait like sitting ducks. 

If he used up Cas’s mojo, the angel would either stay human at best, or die. 

If the patients were healed with grace, they would blow up eventually and end up in Purgatory. Janine Richter and Fred Donovan had been the first to go. 

Too many  _ if _ s, too many variables, which meant they needed to stop Richter yesterday. 

“Fucking son of a bitch,” Dean kept muttering under his breath, stepping on the brakes and swerving the steering wheel, noiselessly. “Did he pick up yet?”

Sam put down the phone he held to his ear. “No.” His insides crawled as though crawling with spiders. Dean cursed again. There had to be a reason Crowley hadn’t contacted them — either his brother was right and he had been played in their haste to get information, or something was stopping the King of Hell. They didn’t have the time to properly summon him. 

“How’s Cas?” Dean barked. 

“... fine.” Sam frowned at the angel’s croaky voice and turned to see Cas leaning against the window, his head down, panting. 

“You sure sound it,” Dean retorted. 

Sam reached over and placed the back of his hand to Cas’s forehead, his stomach dropping at the boiling skin and its dryness — the fever wasn’t done climbing. 

“What’s happening to you?” Sam asked gently, cupping the angel’s hot cheek. 

“I—the grace. It’s burning.” Dean shifted at those words, but quickly turned his attention back to the road. Sam bit his lip. 

“You don’t… Cas, you don’t  _ have  _ grace.” Was he delirious? No, they couldn’t fight Richter with Cas in this condition. They’d have to leave him in the Impala and that sounded just plain cruel. 

“Ngh… No. But it’s burning.” Sam frowned, an idea slamming into him like a wall. 

“Dean, I think Cas can feel when Richter’s using it,” he said, and Dean’s breath hitched. He took another sharp curve which drew a moan from Cas. “Like—like Anna. She could feel hers even when she was human.”

“ _ Ah _ -Anna…” 

“Shit, Sammy,” Dean growled. “Keep trying Crowley.”

But by the time they made it to the riverbank, the Kind of Hell still remained AWOL and Cas wasn’t getting any better. When Dean parked, Sam jumped out and picked up their weapons from the trunk. Dean stood next to the rear door, hand just shy of opening it. In the end, he clicked his tongue in frustration, left Cas inside, and nodded Sam toward the edge of the river. 

They had stopped on top of a small hill, next to the bridge which connected Edenwood to its neighboring town. Just a few yards ahead, the paved road turned to pebbles and hardened sand, sloping downwards to the actual riverbank— an ambitious name, as the stream was so thin it looked more like a brook. Some scrawny trees and unkempt bushes littered the area with broken branches and dry leaves. 

As the brothers descended, carefully so as not to make any sound, they heard two voices — one Sam recognized, the other had to be Mark Blacks. Dean stilled, so Sam stopped moving, both controlling their breathing in order to listen to the conversation.

“... maceutical miracle, Mark!”

“Doctor, you know I want to be cured — I can’t — I don’t… But how do…”

“Don’t you trust me?” There was something skeevy in the voice, an edge that hadn’t been there when they’d first met the man. Its pitch rang high, the words curled with the strange accent of giddiness. There was nothing trustworthy in the way he spoke, and Blacks had noticed as well. 

“I-I do, Victor, you know I do, but Brenda, she-she’ll worry. Maybe we can do this at the hospital tomorrow, huh? I’ll be there first thing in the morning, I’ll have her drive me in case there are side eff—”

A sudden scream pierced the air; a gut-wrenching, blood-curling shriek that startled Sam, and even Dean did a double take that resulted in twigs breaking under their feet. Fortunately, the shout was so loud that some dozing birds screeched, flapping their wings so their noise covered them as they dashed toward them, stealth be damned. 

Sam’s hand flew to his hip and for a second debated whether he should pick the gun or the sword, but opted for the former. If they killed Richter before he gave up the grace, it would all be in vain. 

Richter looked up from his position, kneeling on the ground and straddling Blacks with his hips, both hands at each side of the man’s face. Whatever he’d done to Blacks had knocked him out — his head lolled and the whites of his eyes showed — but Richter didn’t seem affected, not like back in his house. He was using Cas’s grace. 

Next to him, Dean took a step forward, the gun pointed at the doctor and his finger ghosting over the trigger. Richter seemed startled at their presence, but recovered quickly and let out a barking laugh. 

“Get away from him,” Dean hissed. Sam kept his eyes on Richter’s hands, his own weapon drawn.

“Agents,” he greeted them. Hands up, he stood and backed off a few steps, doing a fake curtsy. “I’m busy healing the sick, so you’ll have to excuse yourselves.” 

He flicked his wrist as though slapping someone invisible, and Sam’s breath hitched, expecting to be shoved against a tree. A gush of air unbalanced him sideways, and Richter grunted in frustration as Sam realized the attack failed. Dean had taken a few steps to the side himself, and stared at the doctor, scoffing. 

“W-what?”

“S’all, doc?” Dean taunted, shaking his head. The muzzle of his gun remained pointed at the doctor’s chest, the smile not reaching his eyes. “Now that ain’t gonna hurt us so give us the angel mojo!”

Sam lowered his weapon when, as per Dean’s instructions, Richter moved a few more feet to the side. Sam dashed forward and checked Blacks’ pulse (thready, but there) and nodded at his brother.

“No can do,” Richter replied, the smile looked more like a grimace. “I need it to heal my patients — they’re sick, I’m a  _ doctor _ ! Can’t you see? Don’t you  _ UNDERSTAND? _ ” Another gust of wind hit him, but Sam dug his heels to the ground, unmoving. “What-what’s  _ one _ angel compared to the rest of the world? I’m curing  _ cancer _ !”

Even Richter realized that was the wrong thing to say when he saw what must’ve been murderous expressions on their faces. 

“You don’t mess with our family,” Dean hissed. 

“I’m  _ curing people _ !” Richter repeated, his voice high-pitched, this time a lazier breeze floating the air. He looked around himself, alarmed, eyes so wide they seemed about to pop out of their sockets. “What is  _ wrong  _ with this? Why is it so  _ weak _ ?!” Sam shared a troubled look with his brother. “I-I… If I don’t… If I don’t use grace, all my patients are going—they’re going…”

“... they’re going to die,” Sam finished for him. 

It was hard not to pity the man, and it took every ounce of anger to remind himself that this man — no matter what intentions he claimed to have — hurt Cas, caused the death of his wife and Donovan, and Blacks lay out cold at his feet. He made a deal with Crowley to identify angels and steal from them. As pitiful as he was, as noble as his intentions rang, he deserved nothing. 

“You’re gonna give us the angel-juice back and then you’ll spill,” Dean barked, taking a threatening step forward. “Or I’ll shoot and it ain’t gonna kill you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make it hurt,” he promised. 

“ _ NO _ !! Don’t you  _ get _ it!? I and I alone have found the cure—”

“—for cancer, my, he’s a parrot.”

Sam glared at Crowley, who had just appeared from thin air behind Richter. As customary, the demon grinned lazily at them, his eyes cold and calculating as if appraising them. Sam bit back an angry retort — and he knew his brother was using all of his self-control at the moment because he kept quiet. Instead, Richard growled in panic, wide-eyed and pale. “ _ YOU _ !!”

“Name’s Crowley — surely you haven’t forgotten, love. You don’t seem like the love-em-leave-em kind of bloke.” 

“ _ Seriously _ ?” Sam hissed. 

“Where the fuck were you?” Dean demanded. The demon ignored their questions, his stare fixed on Richter — he looked hungry, and that made Sam swallow, nauseated. 

“Here’s the deal,” Crowley cooed, his voice sweet. “You got your superpower, and now I want him.”

“First Cas’s grace, Crowley,” Sam shouted, goosebumps covering his skin as he stepped closer to Richter. “It’s part of  _ our _ deal, we get the grace and the needle.  _ Then _ we give you Richter.” 

“Then you should bring Feathers here before I  _ change my mind _ .” 

Sam shared a look with Dean, his expression livid. With a curt nod, Dean turned and hurried toward the car while Sam watched Richter, his tense body locked in terror as he spouted incoherent words, jumbles of ‘cure,’ ‘save,’ and ‘Janine.’ Sam reminded himself not to pity the man — but it was hard. And they… Sam  _ had  _ made a deal. When he turned to stare at Crowley, all traces of smugness had been replaced by a dangerous glint to the demon’s face, almost as if he knew Sam had second thoughts about his decision to kill Richter. 

Dean was right; deals were a horrible idea. 

“My wife…” Richter said, breaking the silence. He sank to his knees and Sam watched, although his instincts screamed at him to help him up. “She… she is the best thing that happened to me. Was. She  _ was  _ the best thing that happened to me.” Crowley rolled his eyes, but Sam listened. Richter looked up and met his gaze and, despite everything, Sam was already folding — the doctor sounded too pathetic, too hurt. “Boy, have you ever been in love?”

Sam said nothing, but his blood turned to ice. “Yes.” 

And he could see her now, Jess, standing in the middle of the street as the brothers drove in the Impala in a nameless town, wearing her favorite white dress (they’d joked about white dresses often) and with a timid smile on her lips, a silent goodbye in her eyes. Jess, who’d loved him, whom he’d bought a ring for, who burned on their ceiling. 

That had been…  _ No, it can’t have _ … over ten years ago. On the first anniversary of her death, he had driven to the cemetery and prayed to her — but her tenth had gone unnoticed. 

He felt like throwing up. “Yes,” he admitted. 

“Then you understand how it is,” Richter pleaded. “To love someone so bad you’d do anything — even deals with this man—”

“— _ King of Hell _ , thank you very much—”

“—to help her! To cure her!!”

Sam didn’t know why he said it, but the words escaped his mouth. “She died.”

“Then you  _ must _ understand.” 

And Sam did, because had a demon shown up on his doorstep instead of his brother, had someone promised Jess back, he would’ve given up anything. He might’ve given away Dean’s soul — that’s how much she’d meant to him. And yet, ten years had gone by and he seldom spared a thought for her. That was a whole new low. 

“Janine—her cancer, it was advanced. And then she was healed.”

Sam opened his mouth to ask, but he heard shifting noises behind him and he turned in time to see Dean supporting a flagging Cas with an arm over his shoulder. Cas dragged his feet, barely catching up with Dean’s hurried pace on the uneven ground. Sam dashed forward to hold Cas’s other arm, his skin still burning, but Sam welcomed the biting concern because anything trumped reviving the haunting memories of his dead ex-girlfriend. 

They sat Cas down and leaned him against a tree. 

“We can’t waste any time,” Dean muttered. Cas didn’t seem lucid enough to comprehend what’s going on. 

“I can heal canc—”

“You say that word  _ one  _ more time and I swear I will drag you to hell myself, I’ve been there,” Dean barked. And Sam understood how hard this had to be for Dean. Because as much as they loved Castiel, his brother’s _raison d'être_ was saving people ( _ hunting things _ ) and Richter’s twisted words harshly reminded them of the victims they couldn’t save, the enemies they couldn’t fight.

“They will die without me!” Richter shrieked, pointing at Blacks, sprawled on the ground and out like a light. 

“They’re dead, anyway.” Sam almost didn’t recognize his own voice. “The moment you stop using grace to heal them — they die. They explode.” 

“And instead of coming with  _ me _ , they end up in Purgatory,” Crowley snapped. 

“Instead of Heaven, where they’d be if you hadn’t interfered…” Dean added, shaking his head. 

Richter opened his mouth. And closed it. Eyes unblinking, he whimpered. “Suriel… She-she…”

Sam frowned in confusion as Cas let out shallow gasp behind him. He watched Richter, bloodless lips open in shock. The name had snapped him out of his stupor and he repeated it before gulping air like a drowning fish and coughing with so much force he listed sideways. Sam cursed and rushed to steady him. Cas kept staring owlishly at Richter, blinking only when he became dizzy. 

“Dean,” Sam warned. Dean, jaw clenched tight, walked up to Richter. 

“The grace. This is the last good deed you have left and if you don’t do it willingly, I’ll do it for you.”

Richter mumbled unintelligibly in a low voice, Dean replied nothing in return but stepped closer, now fisting the front of the doctor’s shirt. With shaking hands, Richter pulled something out of his pocket — the syringe. Sam cringed with revulsion when he saw it, the thing which almost killed him, and which would kill Cas unless they hurried. 

“S’m… I-I need to know,” Cas rasped behind them. Sam’s stomach did a somersault at the blood dribbling from his lips. 

“You need your grace back.  _ Now _ .” But Castiel turned his eyes to him, big and pleading. “He can tell us later.”

Cas looked away. Sam bit his lip. 

There would not be a later. This would kill Richter and Sam understood Cas’s need for answers. The name — Suriel — meant something to Cas. 

“Dean, wait!” he called out. Dean had grabbed the needle. 

“You must be kidding me…” Crowley snarled. 

“S-Suriel…” Castiel gasped. Richter looked up. “How…”

“She is—was my wife. The angel, she was also my wife.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Preview: 
> 
> “Juh-Juh…” he’d tried to speak, his eyes unblinking as he looked into the divine creature that rested in his wife’s body. “Janine…”  
> “Suriel.”  
> “Honey,” Janine had said, and Victor had startled at having his wife back. “I think Suriel just fell in love with you.”


	6. The Downfall of Angels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Juh-Juh…” he’d tried to speak, his eyes unblinking as he looked into the divine creature that rested in his wife’s body. “Janine…”  
> “Suriel.”  
> “Honey,” Janine said, and Victor started at having his wife back. “I think Suriel just fell in love with you.”

The world swam before his eyes, noises echoed distortedly — loud one syllable, deaf the next — the texture of his surroundings like ashes on his fingertips. But, above all, the freezing heat and the burning pressure on his chest crushed him further than the deepest levels of Hell, so unforgiving not even the madness of the broken Wall compared to it. 

Castiel focused on Victor Richter’s tale, refused to allow the pain to take away his words. The beginning brought back memories — of Metatron’s taunting, his throat being slit, and the fall of the angels. Brothers and sisters plunging down, unprepared, carrying with them the chaos of Heaven. 

***

_ The Fall of the Angels — hundreds upon thousands of bright lights crashed onto Earth. Humans named it a meteor shower when in reality it marked the end of the world as humanity knew it. Even they, ancient as they were, scarcely remembered the time when they, too, walked the planet among men.  _

_ Oh, it had  _ hurt _. The foreign concept of pain mingled into existence, almost wiping away their consciousness, their sense of being. Torn from Heaven and thrust into a plane they didn’t belong in, their wavelengths stretched to the breaking point of their core.  _

_ And they died — angels perished when falling. Invisible wings tore with a ripping sound so loud it muted their screams and oh, the screams. Feathers scattered all across the universe into unseen explosions, a whirlwind of colors and lights so beautiful and tragic those who survived wept.  _

***

Castiel loved his siblings — he wasn’t meant not to, he didn’t know how not to — but he understood them enough to realize they’d tricked their vessels into consent, rather than asked. Jimmy Novak, devout and kind as he’d been, only took Castiel back to spare Claire of a fate as a vessel. Yes, angels were selfish creatures. 

***

_ At touchdown, the angels who remained vaporized themselves into particles and scurried the Earth to find the bodies which would contain them.  _

_ Those still in existence were injured, their atoms scrambled and unstable but  _ there _. They fled, scavenging for their one true vessel.   _

_ Yet so many more faded away to nothing, wings broken, feathers no more.  _

***

His sister Suriel had taken the body of Janine Richter.

***

_ Suriel, the Angel of Healing, found Janine Richter at her deathbed. Convincing the sick woman to say yes ( _ ‘yes _!’) had been easy; her will to live as relentless as her illness. And Suriel, one of the few who loved humanity as they were meant to be loved, took refuge into that frail, petite body and cleansed it from the impurity of sickness. Janine rested and healed from her own wounds as her vessel caught up with a world of miracles and love and religion.  _

***

Despite the severity of the illness, Suriel graced the cancer away. Miraculous, Richter called it, too much so for a seasoned oncologist as himself. And Janine and Suriel, who got along, confessed the ordeal to their husband and he’d loved them both. 

***

_ Suriel allowed Janine to take control of their body — she was the host — and she eventually learned to love this small community. Janine called her life insignificant in the grand scheme of things, those being God’s plans and the Angels’ missions. However, Suriel adored her all the same because despite her simpleness, the tiny impact her actions instilled to the world and history, they were pure and genuine. Janine, in Suriel’s eyes, was the one perfect human being walking the Earth since the beginning of time.  _

_ Oh, Janine  _ loved _.  _

_ Janine loved her, Suriel, with as much honesty as existed in the realms of possibility; and her husband, Victor, to the point Suriel blessed him without his knowing because Janine’s happiness was her axis.  _

_ Alas, he’d known. Suriel hadn’t understood how a simple human could comprehend the magnitude of the divine, but Janine eased him into it with that smile of hers. Janine opened her heart to that one mortal, although he had only believed when Suriel took the reigns of their mind.  _

_ “Observe,” were her first words to him, and Janine’s fingers touched his forehead and the knowledge of the universe and its beginnings were his.  _

_ “Juh-Juh…” he’d tried to speak, his eyes unblinking as he looked into the divine creature that rested in his wife’s body. “Janine…” _

_ “Suriel.” _

_ “Suriel,” and when he repeated her name, an unfamiliar tug tore into her core, a sentiment so unlike the angelic experience, it made Janine laugh upon taking her body back.  _

_ “Honey,” Janine said, and Victor started at having his wife back. “I think Suriel just fell in love with you.” _

***

Suriel hid from the other angels, from any supernatural creature, cocooning herself into the simple and happy life of humanity. She’d known their greatness with the same intimacy as Castiel. Victor avoided saying it, the word, but Castiel could hear it all the same.

Suriel  _ loved _ . 

And wasn’t that the downfall of all angels?

***

_ Suriel hid as well as possible, Janine amicably calling it ‘licking her wounds.’ There was no malice in the thought, so Suriel came to accept it.  _

_ The angel healed the sick around her husband — bestowing her grace upon those who needed it. The Richters, popular even before the Fall and the appearance of Suriel, soared among their peers. Janine visited the ill and spoke to them, Suriel cured them, and Richter declared them healthy. Doctor Morales, the town’s only mortician, was the only one who came close to figuring it out, he’d called Janine ‘an angel’ though Victor assured her with that crooked smile of his that he hadn’t meant it literally.  _

_ Suriel’s drop to Earth broke her wings and shattered her divine existence, but it had given her so much in return. Love, the single human emotion she entertained in Heaven, was now as part of her as her grace had been.  _

_ She’d known happiness. _

***

And then — the War. Despite the dark gray creeping in the edges of his vision, Castiel forced himself to listen to Richter; how Suriel became involved while wearing his wife’s body, how she’d pledged her allegiance to another angel called Hannah and against an enemy whose name remained long forgotten in his memory. 

Metatron. 

Castiel tried to say it, but pain exploded in his chest, and white spots danced in his vision. Dean hissed something but he couldn’t catch the words.

***

_ “There is War.” _

_ Hannah found her first. Like herself, she occupied a female vessel. The word vibrated inside out, as though hit by aftershocks in her mind, and she remembered finding the marks of burnt wings and feathers scattered across one Heaven to the next, a mocking ladder to infinity.  _

_ Something in her froze and melted at the same time.  _

_ “I cannot help.” Suriel heard Janine’s panic, locked deep down her consciousness. “I am content here, I care not about the affairs of Heaven.” _

_ “It is  _ War _ , Sister!” Hannah pressed, and despite the fragile appearance of her vessel, the strength of the warrior beneath the skin rolled off her in waves. “If you are not with us, you are  _ against  _ us; an ally to Metatron! Is that what you wish?” _

_ “Metatron? The Scribe? He’s a recluse.” _

_ “Not anymore,” Hannah insisted. “He tricked Castiel into closing the Gates of Heaven, he’s recruiting an army and plans to proclaim himself God in the absence of our Father!” _

_ Suriel started. Angels didn’t do that; those who called themselves God were aberrations, close to the Archangel Lucifer in intent. And she recognized the name of the one Hannah fought along with. _

_ “ _ Castiel _?” she spat, remembering the battle when she’d last seen her brother. He’d almost killed her — Suriel had been following orders from Raphael — before disappearing, his skin broken in blisters. “He who called himself God first?” _

_ “He’s not like that anymore, Suriel.”  _

_ And Hannah told her about his redemption, his battles, his unwavering loyalty toward humanity and two men in particular. Hannah’s earnest words swayed her because, as Janine indicated way below the surface, the angel Castiel’s sins were born out of love — and Janine forgave anyone who repented.  _

_ “You wish me to fight?” Suriel asked that question aloud, and though Hannah nodded, Janine cried out in her mind.  _

_ Hannah bit her lip, a very human gesture, at Suriel’s hesitation. “Alright. Stay, but we shall call you if needed, Sister.” _

***

By that point, aware of the workings of yet another War brewing, Suriel \shared with Richter and Janine her knowledge on the intricacies of her species; the miracle of their grace and their need for consent to take in a vessel, how healings worked, how they communicated among themselves — “Angel radio,” Sam muttered — and how to kill them. 

***

_ Hannah sent messages at random intervals, updating Suriel and the Richters on the happenings of the battles and the death rates. Numbers were dwindling on Hannah’s side, Metatron’s army grew stronger; and when the traitor Gadreel allied himself with the Scribe… _

_ Suriel gave Janine the angel blade.  _

_ “You want me to kill your brothers?” Janine asked, watching her face in the bathroom mirror of a small hospital room. Wendy Burke, the Sheriff’s mother, lied in bed, and she would pass three days later.  _

_ “You might have to,” Suriel insisted. “I’ve taught you everything, and Metatron is relentless… I will not allow him to hurt you.” _

_ “But why would he?”  _

_ “Because he can.”  _

***

The disappearance of two angels — if only Castiel had investigated further. If only he’d been able to save them. If only he’d never been tricked by Metatron. 

***

_ The angel stood in front of Janine’s car and, as soon as their eyes met, Suriel took over. Their last reunion occurred little before The Fish, but she recognized him. Kemuel wore a big man — broad-shouldered and with thin lips — which contained the physical power to easily snap Janine’s body in two.  _

_ “No,” Suriel growled, reaching out to call for Hannah and backup. “You will not involve me in this, Kemuel.” _

_ “You have sided with Castiel,” Kemuel spoke, the voice of his vessel low and rumbling. “You are already involved, and it is your turn to die.” _

***

This was all Castiel’s fault. 

***

_ Janine described the next few moments as the darkest, most painful pit of despair. Unable to leave Janine gently, Suriel ripped herself apart, torning herself as quickly as possible into particles and taking Kemuel with her before he could break Janine.  _

_ Something happened — an explosion, a shock of heat and noise so intense that when she woke up in a hospital bed, she thought she’d ended up in Heaven.  _

_ Victor rushed to her bedside in a moment, pale with worry despite the doctor’s assurances that her fainting was due to a drop in blood pressure and that she was alright.  _

_ “What happened?” Suriel’s warnings had kept both of them on edge. _

_ Suriel.  _

_ “She…” Janine’s breath hitched with the realization that, for the first time in months, there was no warm buzzing at the back of her head. “Oh, God, Victor. She’s gone. Suriel’s gone.” _

_ Victor nodded, burying his face in his hands, elbows on his knees.  _

_ “I know… She…” He cursed, almost digging his fingers in his eyes when wiping away hot tears. “The wings... It was…” _

***

They found Janine in the parking lot of the hospital. When Janine signed her release later that evening, she’d understood why her husband could not finish the sentence. Wing marks were burned on the pavement, black against gray, spanning several feet from tip to tip. There were two pairs. Two sets, and one of them belonging to Suriel. 

***

_ It took almost a year before they regained normalcy — Suriel had been a part of their lives, the third member of their childless marriage. Janine and Victor loved her, and the divine affection they’d received in return could be considered nothing short of a miracle. _

_ But their relationship survived and, soon, Suriel was a memory they spoke of fondly.  _

_ Janine’s illness crept up on them, painless and silent until a routine examination found the tumor — a cancer as malignant and aggressive as her first. Thankfully, it was Victor who read the scans and kept the results quiet and out of her medical records. He knew enough by now to understand chemotherapy was futile, and Suriel had left them without blessings.  _

_ “I guess it’s my time to go,” Janine sighed. She twirled her curly hair on her fingers, not as scared at the news as her husband. “Maybe Suriel was wrong about angel souls — I might meet her in Heaven. We’ll wait for you, you grump.” She’d laughed at Victor’s devastated expression.  _

_ “Honey,” Victor said. “Suriel. S-she healed you with her grace, remember? Maybe we… We can get more. Ask another one  to give it to you.” _

_ “Oh, Victor,” Janine shook her head. She was smiling, and it was tragic. “You know the angels are at war, they would never help us. Suriel was keeping us safe from them…” _

_ “What if...” he paused, squinting like he did when deep in thought. “What if there was another way to get grace, then?” _

_ “They don’t sell it on eBay, sweetie,” Janine’s tone was playful, but there was a glint of despair in her eyes. “It’s okay, I’m fine dying.” _

_ “No!” Victor rose to his feet and slammed the door shut behind him. _

***

“And he summoned you,” Dean finished, his voice strangled in irritation. There were hands — whose hands? — preventing Castiel from toppling to the side. The only thing he seemed to be able to focus on were sounds which sluggishly became words and turned to a story. 

There were moans and groans and for a moment he worried that the Winchesters were hurt, until he recognized Jimmy’s voice. 

“I could’ve sworn Moose was the smart Winchester,” Crowley drawled. “You never cease to surprise me.”

“So you got him the needle.”

“And sold everyone’s souls to Hell,” Sam growled. 

There was a whimpered objection from Richter. “— _ know what to do!! _ ”

“Well, you don’t send souls to Hell is what you don’t do!” Dean exclaimed, his voice booming and making Castiel gasp in pain. “Just give it back, Cas needs it.”

“Janine—I want—I need to be with Janine!”

***

_ Victor carried the needle with him wherever he went, and when questioned about the box he would explain that it was a special EpiPen for an allergy he developed recently. Edenwood was such a small town, and they revered him so much no one questioned him. Even doctor Morales only rose his eyebrows in admiration and asked for updates on its effectiveness.  _

_ It was fully charged — how the demon obtained it and how he’d filled it, he needn’t know.  _

***

A painful coughing fit almost made Castiel black out before he managed to ask whose grace Crowley’s had stolen. 

“Whoa, hey, you’re okay…”

***

_ Injecting it (even in minute doses) resulted in excruciating pain, so Richter experimented with it. Its effectiveness remained the same whether he injected it into his wife, or into himself and channeled it into her through touch. In order to spare her, he bore the agony gratefully.  _

_ Once Janine regained her strength again, she even felt better than before her illness.  _

_ “You need to use it to heal others, that’s what Suriel would’ve wanted.” _

_ And thus his mission to rescue his patients and find an angel to drain began.  _

***

Castiel’s grace — frail and thin and useless as it was — could save lives. Human lives. 

Saving people, hunting things. 

Saving  _ people _ , hunting  _ things _ . 

He needed to tell Sam and Dean (‘ _ I shouldn’t be saved.’ _ ) that he found a new purpose. Even if they returned his grace, there was no way he would survive with it. It was unusable, torn, and it might kill him to get it back. 

He needed to tell them. 

It was his only chance to redeem himself. Craziness, Purgatory hadn’t worked, nothing had. He was tainted with sin and this was his last opportunity do the right thing.

Castiel needed to die. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Preview: 
> 
> “Agent…” Morales called out before Dean closed the door behind him. “He wasn’t a bad man.”  
> Dean said nothing.


	7. Like they always do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Agent…” Morales called out before Dean slammed the door behind him. “He wasn’t a bad man.”  
> Dean said nothing.

“... Janine said that—that Suriel would’ve wanted me to heal others.”

Dean strained his ears; Richter’s voice, clear and loud as it had been, was now reduced to an incomprehensible mumble broken with sobs. He wanted to pity the fool, he really did, but he couldn’t feel anything for the man who almost killed Cas — a quick glance indicated that Cas was nowhere near out of the woods.

He cursed.

“Beautiful sob story,” Crowley said, sarcastically. Although Dean wasn’t looking at the King of Hell, he knew he was rolling his eyes.

“Dean,” Sam exclaimed in alarm. Dean, who’d been reading Richter’s body language — hunched, hands carding his hair, pupils dilated — turned at his brother’s obvious distress.

His stomach dropped. Cas, who’d been hanging in there to listen to the story, slumped forward, only Sam’s steady grip keeping him upright. “Fuck,” he cursed and moved to face Richter. “Give. It. Back.”

“I can heal—”

The surge of anger that coursed through his veins was bitterly familiar, and this time unrelated to the Mark of Cain. He took a moment to savor its intensity, unaware that he was able to feel a hatred this deep without the help of a supernatural curse. He shoved his grievances away, taking heavy steps toward Richter, his fists curled so the bite of his nails almost drew blood.

Richter gave a shout as Dean grabbed his shirt and slammed him into a tree.

“Dean, stop!” Sam’s voice rang again, clear enough to pierce through the haze of madness.

He turned to his brother, all the while pushing his forearm onto Richter’s throat. Cas had opened his eyes and gods, but he looked a breath away from dying.

“... right… Dean, he’s _right_.”

The second he understood what Castiel was trying to say, Dean let go as if shocked by electricity. Richter fell to his knees, sputtering and heaving.

“You don’t mean that,” Sam said, gasping. “No, Cas—”

Cas shook his head and shuddered wildly.

“You boys make everything sound like a soppy B movie,” Crowley added. “Unlike you, I have an actual job so _get to the point!_ ”

“Shut up, Crowley!” Sam spat. “Richter, _please_ . Cas’s grace… when it runs out, the people you’re trying to save will _die_! They’ll go to Purgatory—”

“—not if I keep them alive—”

“—you cannot keep them alive _forever_ ! You’ve already doomed them, and the only thing left for you to _redeem_ yourself is to give Cas his grace back!”

At Dean’s feet, Richter stilled, his heaving gasps loud. He looked at Sam and Cas, and swallowed.  

“You mentioned Hannah,” Dean added. “She was best pals with Cas.” It was a stretch, considering Hannah had tried to kill Cas the last time they’d met, but it worked. Richter stilled. “Yeah, Cas? Short for _Castiel_. And if Suriel was besties with Hannah, then they were rooting for the same team.”

“Is he…” Richter gulped. “He’s the angel who… who almost broke the world.”

Dean grimaced. “They’ve forgiven him.” Not necessarily true, but a means to an end. “ _Suriel_ forgave him.”

It took a moment, but Richter sighed and nodded, his head bobbing up and down in a tired motion. With his right hand, he fished something out of his pocket, and Dean bit his lip upon seeing the syringe that had almost killed two of the most important people in his life. Dean reached out to take it — it was hot to the touch — and saw the gray vapor that swam in it. It sparkled duly, unlike the bright blue light he was used to seeing from powered-up angels. It resembled an unimpressive mist or a transparent stormy cloud.

Castiel’s grace had been reduced to this.

“It’s not—it’s not supposed to look like that,” Richter added.

“No, you see, dear Castiel is a poor excuse for an angel,” Crowley replied. “And I’m out of patience.” Dean hissed in annoyance, but his bravado took a turn when he noticed Crowley’s hand hovering in Cas’s direction, though he never stopped looking at Dean. “You keep taking my threats lightly, Squirrel, but I have no use for Feathers here and no patience for you to get your head out of your arse.”

Crowley’s eyes flashed red, and Dean froze at Sam’s shout. “Cas!”

Realization kicked in. Time had run out — Crowley might be bluffing, but he wouldn’t bet Cas’s life on it. _Fuck._ “Sorry, man.” And before he could regret it, before Cas attempted to stop him, he plunged the angel sword in Richter’s chest in a smooth thrust. The ribs resisted and cracked, but the knife glided in like butter.

Richter gasped, his eyes wide in shock, flickering with understanding; that Dean just killed him.

Dean Winchester just killed one more man.

Thoughts stumbled in and out of his mind, but he kept them silent. He would have time to reflect later, he’d drink himself stupid with alcohol and regret, but now he needed a quiet conscience because there was still work to do. _Nonononono_. Later. Fuck saving the world, his soul was unsalvageable. Remorse would have to wait in line.

He wiped the blade on his bloodied jeans, almost wishing he’d be careless enough to cut his thighs open. He’d deserve it. But he didn’t.

“Ah, that’s more like it,” Crowley said irritably, but there was a glint in his eyes. “Ta.” And he was gone.

“Dammit, _fuck_!” Dean kicked the ground, sending sand and pebbles all over, barely missing the unconscious figure of Richter’s patient.

“ _Dean_!” Sam hissed.

Right. Dean rushed over and almost let go of the damned syringe when seeing Cas. For a moment it looked like Sam was holding Jimmy Novak’s body, rather than their angel friend, and only the urgency in Sammy’s voice assured him Cas must still be alive. He pressed his bloody hand against Cas’s face and cringed at the heat — he’d been feverish before, but there must’ve been something angelic left in him because there was no way a human could sustain that temperature otherwise.

“Sammy,” he said, because he didn’t know how to express the fear throbbing in his guts.

“His grace.” Sam extended his hand and Dean gingerly placed the artifact in his brother’s hands and watched him grimace in confusion. “Cas? You with us?”

Silence. Before he could reconsider what he was about to do, Dean snatched the syringe back from Sam and jabbed it in Cas’s chest.

The effect was instantaneous.

Cas shot up, gasping like he’d only seen in cheap films, his muscles spasming so it took both brothers to subdue him. To Dean’s concern, getting back his mojo didn’t heal whatever was wrong with him, judging by the sound of his coughs.

“Cas! You’re okay, man, you’re okay,” Sam hushed.

“Stay with us,” Dean added, though he found it hard to speak around the lump in his throat. It took a long while — too long — for the trembling to die down and for the fits to subside, but when they did, Cas was at least breathing.

***

“I cannot—Oh, oh my God, I cannot believe this,” Sheriff Burke wailed, hands in her face.

Dean sat in the Sheriff’s cramped office and, despite the door being closed, he was positive everyone in the station heard them. He bit back a sigh and nodded in honest sympathy, his expression grave. The sheriff snatched several tissue papers, quickly dabbing her cheeks and lowering her voice.

Edenwood was the kind of town whose biggest tragedy was a smart student falling prey to drugs or a freak traffic accident — two spontaneous combustions (and more to come) and a dead body were already more than this community could handle.

“Victor… Doctor Richter… _he_ did it?” she repeated.

Dean sighed and forced himself to nod.

It had been hard to find a good cover story but, in the end, both him and Sam agreed that the easiest way to close the case was to bring it to full circle. Plus, Mark Blacks had regained consciousness and filed a report; namely, that Richter had tried to force him into accepting a new drug, and appeared delusional during the whole exchange.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “We found out he was part of a whole… organization.”

“Oh, but I-I just cannot believe he’d hurt anyone on purpose.”

FBI confidentiality had its perks. It was easy to pretend the case went high on the secrecy ranks. “He probably thought the drug was good,” he amended.

“He would never kill his wife… I’m not talking to you as their sheriff, agent Smith, but as their neighbor… Victor loved Janine.” Dean said nothing. “Will this happen again? Will there be more victims?”

The working theory remained that any injected patients would still explode and go to Purgatory, which was the only reason Dean had had it in him to keep it together, for now. Sam was currently raiding the Bunker’s library for a cure — anything on the syringe and the grace and how it affected the body, but he hadn’t been born yesterday, so he knew when to call it a mission impossible.

_As if that’s ever stopped us from trying..._

If Sam didn’t come up with a solution within the day, they would call Rowena. Fuck. He hated cases like this one — closed for all intents and purposes, and yet still all over the place.

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

The patients gathered at the hospital, in solitary, and any contact they had with the outside world was through reinforced glass.

“Thank you, agent…” she said with a sigh.

***

Doctor Morales had been less graceful than the sheriff. He flat-out refused to believe Richter had involved himself in illegal drugs and scoffed at Blacks’ testimony, claiming that he exaggerated, maybe even hallucinated.

Dean, in the morgue, tried to remind himself that the doctor was a civilian, but he was trying his patience.

“You don’t _have_ to believe me,” Dean repeated, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Fact is fact whether you like it or not.”

“You don’t know doctor Richter like I do!”

_You don’t know what’s out there like_ I _do_ , but he bit his tongue. “Arguing with me ain't gonna change it. Now, are you clear on where you’ll be sending the results of the autopsy? I get it’s irregular, but this whole case is irregular.”

“Wasn’t aware there was a whole secret department for freak cases,” doctor Morales grumbled.

“And that’s the friggin’ _point_ ,” Dean spat back.

Cleaning up their mess also meant ridding themselves of damnable evidence, therefore sending anything incriminating to another hunter to collect for future references — Garth, this time.

“Agent…” Morales called out before Dean slammed the door behind him. “He wasn’t a bad man.”

Dean said nothing.

***

It felt all kinds of wrong, but the case was closed.

***

Since Sam had driven the Impala home with Cas, Dean was stuck riding two trains (to erase any trails) and stealing a car to arrive in Kansas, and hopping into a bus to get to Lebanon, where Sam would pick him up.

A six-hour trip ended up taking double the time, and when Dean finally sat at the driver’s seat of his baby (he never allowed his brother to drive, not unless he’d been physically incapacitated) he was ready to bury himself into his memory foam.

Motels beds sucked all over the fifty states of the country — not that they’d ever been to Hawaii.

“You look like crap,” Sam said. Dean bit back a retort on the insolence of that observation.

“This whole thing is crap,” he spat in the end, which shut Sam up. Buses put Dean in a foul mood in the best of scenarios, but having had almost half a day to think of all the ways they’d screwed up hadn’t helped. “Hear anything from Crowley?”

“No, and I haven’t been calling him, either,” Sam replied.

“What about Rowena?” He _hated_ the thought of dealing with the witch, but leaving those poor cancer victims to rot because of Richter? Yeah, not on Dean’s watch.

“She’s working on it.”

Which meant Sam had found nothing in the library. Didn’t mean Dean would not bust his own ass looking for something — anything. “What about Cas?” He kept his eyes on the intersection out of the city to avoid being run over by a truck, so he missed Sam’s expression.

“He’s… better.” Dean risked a glare at the vagueness of the answer. “Cas does think Richter ended up using some of his grace, but what he got back seems to be enough to keep him up and running. Kind of.”

It took all the crap he’d been through during his entire life, all the fucking tragedies they’d been force-fed since childhood, not to lose control of the steering wheel and sagging in relief. Instead, he gripped it tighter until his fingers cramped.

“He’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, Dean. He will be.” And Dean heard Sam’s grin, rather than saw it.

***

Upon arriving at the bunker, Dean slammed the door of the Impala and rushed inside, torn between the real need of a decent shower, a couple of Z’s, and checking up on Cas. In the end, he knocked on the door and didn’t waste a second when a sore voice invited him in.

“Jesus, Cas,” he swore. Thankfully, the angel wasn’t anywhere near as bad as back in Edenwood. Sure, he looked pale as a ghost and seemed to have trouble keeping his head up — but he was alive. And, to a Winchester, that was more than enough. _Fucking low standards_.

“Hello, Dean.” And the fact that Cas didn’t have a coughing fit reassured him.

“So, you going human on us?” he asked, sitting on the chair next to the bed where Sam must’ve sat nursing Cas back to health. Sam entered the room behind him, but he was too busy studying Cas’s complexion.

“I might be one step closer to being human than an angel,” Cas admitted. His voice cracked at the end and he coughed a few times.

_As long as you’re with us._ Dean nodded. “You… sleep, or rest, or whatever it is you need to do now. We’ll figure this shit up — your grace, Richter’s patients. We always do.”

“Right,” Sam agreed. “Don’t worry about it, Cas.” Dean frowned at the guarded tone and looked at his brother, who gave Cas a stern glare. They weren’t telling him something.

“You could’ve used—”

“—no—”

“—to buy some time…”

That explained Sam’s restlessness, instead of relief, upon giving Dean the news of Cas’s recovery; and why Cas seemed so disgruntled despite being home again. It hit him like someone pouring acid in this stomach, and he had to bite back a gush of bile.

“The hell are you talking about?” he growled, even though he knew the answer. His outburst startled Cas, who coughed again, but Dean paid no mind. “No Cas, we don’t sacrifice family, _ever_.”

“They could’ve…”

“I’ve said it once and I’ve said it before — I’m not letting you kamikaze yourself to buy others a few minutes, Cas.” The guilt, the frustration at how unsatisfactory the case sat with him made his blood burn. “You’re one of us — you think I’d let _Sam_ pull this crap on me?”

“Cas,” Sam spoke gently when addressing the angel. “There is nothing you could’ve done. This whole thing, what happened with Suriel… That isn’t on you. You had nothing to do with it.”

Cas remained silent and unconvinced.

“Buddy,” Dean moved from the chair to the edge of the bed. “This sacrificing thing we do — this saving the world, the greater good bullshit, it _doesn’t_ work. The more we give, the more the universe takes from us... and I’m done. I’m fucking done with losing Sam and losing you.”

“Sam’s your brother—”

“So are you,” Sam interrupted, and Dean mentally thanked him. Because he’d been up for almost thirty hours and he didn’t have it in him in a good day to talk about feelings and shit.

Cas needed to understand.

He _had_ to.

“We’ll figure it out, Cas,” he repeated, and he pinched the bridge of his nose to soothe the burn behind his eyelids. “We always do. You’re a Winchester. You don’t get to quit.”

Cas, who’d refused to meet their eyes during the whole exchange, finally rose his head and looked at them. He nodded tentatively.

It was a small gesture — not even a convincing one, but Dean would take what he could get. They were fine, the three of them, and despite it all going to shit, despite the blood in Dean’s hands, the souls doomed to Purgatory… They would find a way to fix it.

They always did.

“Get some sleep, you guys,” Sam said, patting Dean on the back. “I’ll be in the library.”

  
  



End file.
